KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ After a tornado ripped through northeastern Kansas Tuesday evening, at least 11 people were reported injured in Douglas County, several homes were damaged and more than 13,000 were without power.
In Lawrence police reported large trees down, along with power lines and debris along roads on the southeastern edge of the city.
Some areas were impassable, police said, noting that the tornado appeared to have passed outside the city limits.
More damage was reported near Linwood and Bonner Springs after the tornado headed northeast.
Police began blocking roads around Linwood shortly after the tornado passed through.
About a mile and half west of Linwood, the smell of gasoline soaked the air. Already the buzz of chainsaws could be heard up and down the roads into town. Felled trees littered the way in.
Mark Duffin, 48, standing outside his smashed house west of Linwood, works for the railroad and he can tell you one thing: A tornado doesn't sound like a freight train.
Duffin said his wife called him and told him the weather was getting seriously bad.
Then it was deathly calm at their home on Golden Road. Duffin checked the TV. The reception was bad, but the message was clear: the tornado was headed right for them.
The next thing he knew, the walls of his house were coming down.
He grabbed a mattress and followed his 13-year-old son down to the basement, and used the mattress to protect him.
The house came crashing down around them.
They owned the house for about 14 years. He and his family had been thinking of moving.
Duffin's advice: "Watch the news, keep your head down, and be prepared. I had a plan for years, I've lived here a long time."
Asked how he remained so calm after the disaster, he laughed.
"I'm just glad I found my two dogs alive," he said. "Wife's alive, family's alive, I'm alive. So, that's it."
In Linwood, houses were damaged and destroyed for a mile in any direction, but an eerie quiet set in. Not many people were moving about in a neighborhood were at least a dozen houses were damaged, and some destroyed.
Dennie Roberts emerged unharmed physically from the tornado near Linwood.
But he choked up a little when he talked about what just happened. He thought of his wife, Sherry, who died of injuries from a tornado not far away in 2003.
When it came this time, he was at home watching TV. It was a cable show, so they didn't interrupt with the weather report.
It was his son who called him: "Put your but in the basement," the son said.
That's what Roberts did. He crouched there, on the phone with his son.
"We'll see if the good Lord blesses me," he said.
"He did," Roberts said later, getting in his car to drive away and meet some friends for dinner. "He carried me though it."
About 13,679 customers remained without power at 9:20 p.m. after the storm passed in east-central and northeast Kansas, according to an online outage map provided by Westar Energy.
Tornado warnings popped up in the Kansas City metro area as the storm moved northeast. The warning was canceled at 7:35 p.m.
At Kansas City International Airport, storm debris closed airfields, according to a tweet the airport posted at 8:10 p.m.
A little more than an hour earlier, the airport had tweeted that it moved customers into the parking garage tunnels to shelter in place. The all-clear was given at 7:45 p.m.
In Wyandotte County, Unified Government spokesman Edwin Birch said before 8 p.m. that no casualties had been reported. "Still assessing damage," he said in a text message. "Right now, a few uprooted trees, reports of damage to structures and power outages."
Another tornado warning was issued for Clay and Ray counties as the National Weather Service shared a report of a "large and extremely dangerous" tornado. The warning was canceled just before 8:30 p.m.
The Clay County Sheriff's Office said on Twitter that no injuries have been reported but some storm damage was seen east of Kearney.
